Manufacturing of bound printed matter, such as books and magazines, is usually conducted entirely by experts in printing companies or publishing companies from the editing to the bookbinding; in editing, there are conducted operations, such as the selection of the subject matter, the drafting and proofreading of the manuscript, the selection of photographs, illustrations, etc., the layout of the manuscript, photographs, illustrations, etc., and the preparation of a block copy and printing; and, as the bookbinding operations, there are conducted the binding of the printed text, etc. by threads, wires, adhesive or the like, and the completion of the format by using a printed cover, end leaves, a title page, etc.
In recent years, as a result of the marked progress in the functions of personal computers and printers, and with the advent of a digital video and a digital camera, it is possible to easily take taken images into a personal computer for editing; thus, the professional editing operations, which have mainly been performed in publishing companies or the like, can be easily conducted by an individual on the personal computer. Thus, there is a demand for enabling the individual to finally put such images together and bind them into a booklet as a record book or an original book to his taste. To put in order and store picture postcards, New Year's greeting post cards, greeting cards, printed photos, visiting cards, menus, various list slips, etc. possessed by an individual, it is general practice to use a dedicated binder, a file case or the like. However, such existing products are limited to a certain degree in size; further, due to the use of a ring type binding tool or the like, they are rather bulky for storage purposes. Further, in some cases, it is necessary to directly make predetermined holes in picture postcards or the like. Thus, also regarding mediums in the form of cards, there is a demand for enabling an individual to put them together and bind into a booklet according to the purpose.
To meet the above-mentioned demands, the present inventors have already proposed a bookbinding kit enabling an individual to perform bookbinding at home easily and at low cost without needing any aid of an expert (JP 2002-166679 A).
In performing bookbinding operation, it is necessary, for example, to maintain the book form and to firmly protect the text sheets to be bound, so the book cover is required to exhibit a certain degree of durability and toughness. Thus, to make such an original book as mentioned above, there is used a book cover member formed by gluing a front cover core and a back cover core to the reverse side of a book cover sheet with a book title, a book cover pattern according to the taste of the individual, etc. drawn thereon.
The book cover member constitutes, as it were, the face of the book, so accuracy and neatness in finishing is required thereof; for example, the book title should be at the correct position on the spine and the front cover, and the book cover pattern should be placed at the correct position. For this purpose, it is necessary to perform accurate positioning on the above-mentioned cores with respect to the book cover sheet; in particular, since the cores must be glued to the reverse side of the book cover sheet with the book cover pattern, etc. drawn thereon, it is rather difficult to perform positioning thereon with respect to the patterns or the like on the front surface; thus, in the operation of preparing the book cover member, it has been impossible to avoid the use of auxiliary tools, such as a ruler for accurate measurement of the positional relationship and a stabbing for clarifying the core gluing positions. Further, in view of the fact that the range of the age of the user desiring preparation of an original book is gradually expanding nowadays, there is a demand for an improved technique for further facilitating the preparation of a book cover member.
Apart from this, there is a demand for a technique which makes it possible to freely add new text sheets to an original book already completed by binding together a plurality of text sheets, or to remove some text sheets therefrom without damaging the text sheets already bound. In a conventional book finished through professional bookbinding, the text portions are firmly glued so as to be superimposed one upon the other so that no detachment of text sheets may occur; thus, it is rather difficult to freely remove text sheets or add other text sheets without damaging them. Patent Document: JP 2002-166679 A